Yes, she was there! She was bending over him, all suffused with tears, shaking with emotion, pale with terror! She was speaking to him, she was imploring him to do something as she clasped her hands together and caressed him with her bare arms! He seized her, he drew her towards him, and she sank quivering upon his breast!

1 A house-porter.

2 A twenty-kopeck piece.

3 Leader of a Cossack rebellion during the reign of Katerina the Great (1762–1796).

4 Mr.

5 Corn brandy.

6 The greatest of Russian poets (1799–1837).

PART II

I

“WHAT IS THE matter? What has frightened you so?” he said, now completely restored to consciousness, and clasping the girl eagerly to his breast. “What ails you, Katerina? What ails you, my dearest?”

She continued sobbing gently, with her eyes cast down and her face hidden in the young man’s bosom. Indeed, it was long before she could speak, so racked was she with nervous tremors.

“I do not know,” she said at length, half-choked with tears. “I do not know,” she said again in a voice that was scarcely audible. “I cannot even think how I come to be here in your room.”

As she spoke she clung to the young man, and, as though moved by some irresistible force, kissed his shoulders, hands, and breast. Finally, with the look of one who is overcome with despair, she sank to the floor before him, buried her face in her hands, and leaned her head against his knees.

He hastened to raise her, and to seat her by his side, but her face remained crimson with shame as with her eyes she mutely besought him not to look at her. Presently a painful smile showed itself on her lips—but a smile which presaged a new paroxysm of despair. All her terrors seemed to return, and she looked at Ordynov diffidently, appeared anxious to avoid his gaze, and answered his questions only in a whisper, and with downcast head.

“Perhaps you have had a nightmare?” said Ordynov. “You have been dreaming, have you not? Or perhaps he has frightened you again? Has he had another fit? Is he unconscious? Perhaps he has been telling you things which you ought not to have heard? Is it so?”

“No. I have not been dreaming,” replied Katerina, with difficulty mastering her agitation. “Indeed, I have not even been to sleep. Nor has he said anything at all to me. He has long been gone to bed. True, once he called to me, and I ran to him, but he was still fast asleep. I spoke to him, but I received no answer. He did not even hear me. What a fit he had last night! May God help him! . . . Oh, the bitter anguish in this heart of mine! I have been praying—yes, praying a long, long time.”

“Katerina, my darling! . . . But you are not as terrified as you were last night?”

“No, it is different this time.”